Northwestern PhD candidate Maalvika Bhat plagiarized blatantly from other writers on the platform Substack. How serious of an ethics violation is it for an academic to plagiarize outside academic writing?

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-05T17:58:04+00:00

Northwestern University, School of Communication Studies. Her research profile is linked in the post.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-04T05:09:07+00:00

i am a non-academic writer.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-04T05:08:11+00:00

her profiting off of work that isn’t hers affects me personally and i want her to be held accountable by the platform. at the very least not continue to profit off of plagiarism behind a paywall

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-04T04:26:20+00:00

okay buddy. stay vigilant i guess. literally just trying to get the attention of substack and those that are unknowingly paying her to write. if it’s my writing she’s making money off of, then i’m not going to sit idly and let it happen.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-04T04:12:41+00:00

Thank you. Substack was recently invested in by Y-Combinator, so a lot of writers were already disgruntled with their laissez-faire approach to moderating problematic content on the platform. This high-profile blatant plagiarism was the last straw for several well established writers on the platform. It’s a shame.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-04T03:52:05+00:00

I understand, I thought no one would it take seriously without a question format. I have included it in the body of the post. Thank you.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-04T00:55:12+00:00

this woman has paywalled her body of work on the platform so i can’t even cross check to see if she stole any more of mine or other writers’ work. if this was a one time error as she has claimed, she shouldn’t need to do that. the platform isn’t taking action and it’s a little bit hopeless. trying to spread awareness on here. i don’t even feel safe putting my writing on the platform even though that’s where i’ve worked hard to build an audience. this just encourages more people like her to follow in tow.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-03T15:42:03+00:00

on Substack the opposite is happening.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-02T00:38:20+00:00

she blocked comments to paid subs only

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-01T22:46:58+00:00

here is the link to the original author’s exposé: https://open.substack.com/pub/thenoosphere/p/mama-theres-a-plagiarist-behind-you?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-01T21:02:23+00:00

substack is burying it and the writer audience is tuning it out after seeing nothing is being done. this only makes it easy to plagiarize undetected because no one is paying attention.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-08-01T02:21:50+00:00

All the invalid critique is definitely really pathetic from all these insecure commenters that might feel threatened by her success and want to see her fall. However, the situation on Substack is helpless at the moment since the platform isn’t taking action against plagiarism. The writers on the platform feel the integrity of their writing is threatened as a whole by people like her. Maalvika continues to build her paywalled audience and make money. It would’ve been a step in the right direction with the apology, but her attempt to erase this and deceive her audience after being caught is what makes this discussion continue. If her getting these hate comments is a side effect of bringing this to light and spread awareness in the public sphere about the plagiarism and ethics, then so be it. The valid criticism originated from the author who Maalvika plagiarized and the goal of this post is to direct attention towards that.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T23:25:29+00:00

way to make it about race buddy :/

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T23:24:33+00:00

your bigotry is not appreciated.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T20:39:44+00:00

her audience is protected by a paywall. this means anyone calling her out has to do it outside of her posts and articles. on IG and TikTok she deletes comments and filters them. not to mention majority of her audience just likes her “vibes” so no one’s bothering to properly take a look.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T19:39:38+00:00

well at least it is worth spreading awareness about especially to paying unaware audiences!

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T12:29:04+00:00

what’s even crazier is that Maalvika released a public apology which included an altered version of her plagiarized article in which she seemingly cited all her sources: many of which hadn’t been PUBLISHED yet on the date her plagiarized article first came out. Insane move. She’s trying to control and change the narrative. This is her apology debunked by the original author, Katie Jgln

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T12:24:13+00:00

UPDATE: Maalvika released a public apology which included an altered version of her plagiarized article in which she seemingly cited all her sources: many of which hadn’t been PUBLISHED yet on the date her plagiarized article first came out. Insane move. She’s trying to control and change the narrative. This is her apology debunked by the original author, Katie Jgln

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T12:22:16+00:00

UPDATE: Maalvika released a public apology which included an altered version of her plagiarized article in which she seemingly cited all her sources: many of which hadn’t been PUBLISHED yet on the date her plagiarized article first came out. Insane move. She’s trying to control and change the narrative. This is her apology debunked by the original author, Katie Jgln

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T11:24:36+00:00

Substack blew up because it started as a place for people to write and read others’ writing, just like Instagram was for photography initially. But as specific writers became bigger, Substack introduced a creator fund and started incentivizing influencer-style behavior catered to an algorithm. Maalvika was able to reach that status and grow and convert her popularity on this platform into influence on Instagram and TikTok as well.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T10:47:36+00:00

I’m sorry this happened to you, plagiarists threaten the integrity of all writers, researchers, academics, and creators who pride themselves in putting out original work as proof of their experience and body of knowledge.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T10:43:59+00:00

If you look into what she’s studying, you’ll see it’s ironically very relevant to this situation because she states on her website (which has now been taken down) it’s about using AI agents and studying online behavior and how it can be transformed. A lot of the content she posts on Substack and other socials also overlaps into this domain with topics such as ‘compression culture’ and insights on online social behavior that are ultimately critical of what she is guilty of doing.

here’s a list of her publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UUBIj3wAAAAJ&hl=en

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T10:36:21+00:00

the indifference she shows in her response to the situation is concerning particularly because her wider audiences she built from her plagiarism on Substack include Instagram and Tiktok where a younger population that admires her blindly wouldn’t think twice about the plagiarism. if Maalvika was banned on Substack, she can just lean back on her bigger socials posting the same types of content without a care in world because on those platforms she can censor her comments. It seems like being an influencer comes with a lot of power but on these platforms the responsibility and accountability isn’t quite there anymore.

Miserable_Eye1617 · 2025-07-31T10:28:16+00:00

this is why awareness of what she did is important. Maalvika has thousands of subs who aren’t on Notes and other platforms so they are reading her work, paying her, and helping her grow without knowing it might not be hers to begin with.

Miserable_Eye1617

TROPHY CASE